AttemptGreen.com

So I recently received an email from Verizon offering me a brand new cell phone for free.  Well, that’s just the hook and they just want me to extend my contract again.  I don’t foresee not using Verizon since almost all my family and many of my friends are also on Verizon, making the majority of my calls free.  This provides me an opportunity to get a new cell phone for free.  As I contemplated this, as much as a new phone would be cool, what would I do with the old phone?

Most major cell phone service providers have nice donation/recycling programs.

• Verizon – HopeLine donates your old phone to support victims of domestic violence
• T-Mobile – will recycle or reuse old devices and all proceeds go to their charity programs
• Sprint – will recycle or reuse old phones and proceeds go to Internet Safety for Kids, they additionally have a buy-back program for old Sprint PCS or Nextel phones
• AT&T – is a complete recycling program for phones and accessories

As I was looking into other options, I found this article called 50 Ways to Leave Your Cell Phone with many other options. So for those of you that might have one (or 3) older phones that you don’t use (you know who you are), take that step and donate/recycle those devices.  One of the cool things about most of these donation options is that they will also take batteries, phone accessories, even PDAs.

My final decision on this whole new cell phone thing goes back to the three Rs.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  In this case, I’m choosing to reduce.  This means that I have decided to not get a new cell phone at this point in time.  My current cell phone works just fine and ultimately the newer cell phones don’t provide features that I can’t wait to get my hands (except the iPhone, but that won’t work with Verizon anyway).  So until there is some compelling reason for me to get a new phone, I’m sticking with what I have.